The problem with Bart Ehrman is that he is good at his expertise (textual criticism) but mediocre at best in everything else (general historigraphy, exegesis, etc…)
To be fair, Ehrman is smart and his work is OK at a scholarly level. Most of his ‘opponents’ hold him with some regard, they do not say ‘he’s just a crackpot’.
He is also quite a nice speaker, very passionate.
The PROBLEM is that especially in his non-scholarly publications (ie his books) he grinds a huge axe and even lacks honesty here and there. Sometimes (like in ‘Forged’ he also makes some bad exegetical work).
So ‘common people’ who read Ehrman’s work often have a severly warped view… also Ehrman seems to tell or imply things in his pop-books that he often denies in debates with other scholars (since they would otherwise bust him).
Look up the Daniel B. Wallace vs. Bart Ehrman “dialogue” (it was a friendly debate) on youtube or
www.ehrmanproject.com. It’s a nice debate and both show repsect ofr each other and sometimes make ironic comments about each other. It’s also quite instructive.
PS: Ehrman is agnostic but DOES believe that Jesus existed, taught and had disciples. His main ‘claim’ is that the New Testament is unreliable and the ‘original text’ completely lost (not that today we have only fiction, but that there is a lot of ‘pollution’).
Ehrman actually wrote a book about the existence of Jesus (angering atheist fuindamentalists like Richard Carrier who support the Christ Myth Theory… which NO scholar believe btw).
Tacitus and Josephus mention him.
Josephus account is a bit polluted (i.e. some additions) but no doubt that he wrote about Jesus.
Also: the Jews mention Jesus in the talmuld. They do recognize that he was a real persion and was “hanged” (not in the sense ‘hanged by the neck’ as we mean today) referring to his death on the cross.
They of course picture him as evil and an enemy of God and state that his disciples ‘healed people in his name’. The condemn Jesus to hell as well
Now although this does not prove Christianity true, it does prove that Jesus was a real person and had quite an impact in 1st Century Palestine. So it immediatelyu proves people like Richard Carrier or Earl Doherty (who claim Jesus did not exist) wrong.
Also we know Celsus (Origen quotes him e rebuking his arguments) a Pagan mentioned him (although we only have Origen’s quotations not Celus actual work) stated that Jesus was “born out a Roman soldier called Panthera”… this is though to be a distorsion of the Talmuld where Jesus is indeed called ‘Ben Pandera/Pantera’’ (son of Pandera/Pantera) where Pandera appears to be like a ‘average foreigner’,. a Roman maybe, i.e. claiming that Miriam (also referred as Stada in the Talmuld, which might come freom the word for unfaithful) was unfaithful to her husband and had a kid with some lover.
They say other horrible stuff about Jesus, obviously, since they are detractors, yet from all the bad stuff, it comes quite clearly out that the ‘Talmuld Jesus’ is a response to the ‘Gospel Jesus’ a for of anti-Christian apologestics
See:** Peter Schäfer - Jesus in the Talmuld**
Now, if Jesus was not real, I doubt the Jews would have gone in so much detail to make him such an horrible person… it would have been easier just to say to other Jews: look Jesus is like Horus, he does not exist he’s some pagan god or prophet made up by those pagan ‘christians’.
Evidently Jesus (and disciples) had quite an impact on the 1st century Jews… this does NOT mean the Romans would have cared a bit.
The talmuld also shows the tension between Jews and Christians in the early days of Christianity, Obviously the Jews would not be so negative otherwise.
DISCLAIMER: I am not saying the Jews are bad or making accusations. Of course Christian writers wrote sometimes horrible things about the Jews as well and it is only normal and human to ‘say horrible things’ about your opponent.
This happened with ‘Vlad Dracul’ ( “Dracula”) as well… although in Romania he’s a folks hero aginst Turk invasion, most sources (that show him as a horrible person indeed) come from German writers who had an axe to grind against Walachia and Vlad Dracul. Not saying Vlad was a saint, but he was no satan worshipper either as some sources accuse him.
. The Jewish historian Josephus mentions Jesus and St. Peter’s confrontation with Simon the Magician. You gotta remember Jesus was only a simple carpenter from a tiny little area that the Roman Empire could care less. The only means of communication those days were oral tradition and the odds of the Romans hearing about Jesus at the concurrent time were close to 0. It is very important to place yourself in the full context of those days when you approach that issue and not look at it with 21st century mind.